With a little help from our friends

When we started out on this sustainable living journey (which later became turning our backyard into a mini farm!) a few years back, we felt like we were on our own. But the more we did and the more we talked about our plans and projects, the more our existing friends put up their hands with offers of help, offers of materials and support and interest. And then, gradually, we found that we were making new friends - likeminded new friends who were on similar journeys and who were keen to learn from us as well as teach us, share with us and help us out too. So this post is just a little thank you to all of the people who have helped us out along the way, with things like..... 

-Lifting water tanks over 5 foot high fences

-Scavenging fencing materials (buckets, barrels, pallets, carpet, tyres and other things!) from rubbish piles because you knew we needed them. 

-Foraging with us for blackberries, apples, mushrooms, fish, weeds and cool things from opshops. 

-Offloading your excess cucumbers, pears, tomatoes, peaches, meats and roosters into our fridge (ok, the roosters didn't go straight in the fridge, we turned them into meat first!)

-Letting us utilise your buck for the purpose of getting our goat in kid (even if it failed dismally!)

-Giving us wool for our latest crafty efforts of spinning and felting (and then trying to gjve us even more wool - we've now been offered enough wool that we could've re-insulated our house with it!)

-Cooking and preserving with me and sharing your recipes. 

-Pointing us in the direction of a supply of firewood just waiting to be cut and collected. 

-Offering places for our goats to be tethered (even though our cantankerous goats hate going across the road from home, let alone to a paddock down the street, so we haven't been able to take you up on the offer!) 

-Delivering hay bales from your stack and bags of manure from your horses. 

-Sharpening our chainsaw blade. 

-Listening, offering advice and even coming to look at properties with us when we were trying to decide whether to move or not. 

-Sharing your knowledge about everything from making salami to growing fruit trees and hatching chickens. 

-Learning to be beekeepers with us. 

-Supporting our journey and our choices by buying us books and magazines with great ideas, pointing out websites and not being freaked out by using our waterless toilet. 

-Giving us your excess veggie seeds. 

-Helping out with ideas, materials and lessons for our now homeschooling kidlets. 

-Making awesome pizza peels and oven trays for us.

-Supplying us with your empty beer bottles for our home brew and jars for jams. 

-Caring for our ever growing menagerie when we go away. 

-And so much more. 

I hope that as the years go by, we manage to repay all the favours and gifts   and/or pay it forward to others. Thank you so very very much to our beautiful friends and supportive families - we couldn't have gotten this far without you.

We love you guys!